Very Short Battery Life... help?!?

Same here, switched everything off, wifi, bluetooth, video sharing etc.
Turned the Wlan power down from 100ma to 10ma.

I had the phone on charge last night and I unplugged it at 8.15am
I have not used the phone at all, no calls, messages, no video playback nada nothing at all, at 2.30pm its down to 2 bars !!! (it has been on stand by so no screensaver)

I have had it for a week now and the battery has been cycled 6 or 7 times.

I love the phone but as it stands I have to conclude that there is something seriously wrong here. God knows what it will be like when I swap over and start using it full time.

How did u turn down the wlan power?
I have been searching the phone for a bit now and found nothing haha
Thanks

settings - connectivity - wireless lan - options - settings - options - advanced settings

I let my phone run completely down and then charged while switched off, might be too early to say but its now 2pm and its still on full charge, not used it much but much better than previously when it was draining while doing nothing.

Fingers crossed

Thank you very much for your help

I let mine run down then gave it a good charge and it seems to be a lot better now.
I left it on overnight with the keylock on and nothing else runing and it barly lost any power at all 😊
Well if all is working now then i guess it just a great phone with absolutly nothing wrong with it haha brilliant.

Hi guys ! There's a lot to say about battery life ...
Two things are important :
1 . After a full charge in the beginning , use it down completedly ...
2. Keep it on the Charger , while the Pnone is completely switched off for several hours . Overnight for instance !
Repeat this (1 + 2) once in a while .

😊 Regards jApi NL

I, too, have had none of these problems. The battery life for me (5 full discharges then 5 full charges) is nothing short of amazing for the sue I am getting out of a device with such a large screen. Please see my reply to the posting
battery life?
started up by the user:
abadassbiker

Good luck!

I think the batteries are lagging behind the hardware at this point?

It's worth checking that the accuweather widget isn't polling the gps constantly if it's set to my location.

IMHO I would really stress doing several e.g. 5 full discharges (where the phone refuses to switch on) then 5 full charges, on the battery. But, it's best to do this on a completely new, fresh, battery - I have no idea what happens if you do this on even a semi-used Li-Ion.

I proved this to myself on several WM5/6/6.1 handsets over the last few years. e.g. I have a third-party 3000 mAh battery on a WM5 handset that still lasts me a week, with moderate use, and over a month on standby (I don't use it much now), and it is now 2 years old.

I know, patience is a difficult virtue, but I now do the above battery charge 'cycling' with every bit of new kit I buy. It makes a huge difference (it's probably not well advertised as batteries are obviously a big source of income for manufacturers!) and helps the planet too i guess blah blah

Then apply all the known tweaks (see elsewhere: packet data/video sharing ones) and ensuring WiFi and GPS apps are fully closed via the S60 'open apps' dialog and forcing them to quit after use.

With quite regular use in 3G (4h), dipping into camera (30 min), GPS (1h) etc, plus my recent testing on this new handset, I am just about getting to end of day 2 before charging is forced on me.

after owning silver n95 then onto black n95 with a half decent battery life i then got this i8910 as an upgrade as been out of contract waiting for nearly a year for a phone that i would replace my n95 8g for.

Going on the reports of you need to flatten the battery 1st properly for it hold a decent charge, i would say that if your one those people that 1st say took delivery of their new phone in the day charged it up fully put their sim in used it a little like flicked through its menus set the time etc took a pic and odd video then noticed it was down a bar already, but you then decided to plug your phone into your pc to load your backed up contact details? If so the phone was now charging via the usb surely not helping this matter.

I have it acknowledged from high up at Orange that there is a problem with the battery life on this phone and after receiving my second new i8910 its no different from the 1st one.

So they are sending me new replacement battery and i am going to put it to the test full charge then full flatten with no usb charging use and test the battery life from then on.

Going on another post on this site there has been some long mp4 playbacks with these batteries and they are doing 8 hours plus.

His post stated that the battery indicator is non linear i had noticed that too, and i am wondering if there is any battery indicator software that works in more detail and is correct?

One thing i had noticed was the packet data hanging on all the time and was needing manual reset in Admin settings.
So i de-branded it last night wow!
packet data is used only when needed now and i never need to play with settings to turn it off.

Problem now is Orange maps where fully functional before on my Panther 1200 price plan now don't work.

Got route 66 but it wants money to navigate.

Garmin Xt is working but eek bit nasty compared to TomTom Copilot and Ndrive .

Ok, so my battery sucks as well. Still, after depleting and recharging, it now seems a little better.

I've got to have pushmail and UMTS on all the time, so I'm power challenged. I'd be interested if anyone finds a version of Mfe that will work on the phone as I've heard that it's easier on battery drain than Roadsync, but as yet it's one of the many Nokia-only apps.

Also, with other phones, there has been speculation that backing up, reformating and restoring the microSD might help. I may try that as a last ditch effort down the line as I use a 16GB card in mine on top of the built in 16GB.

Last, but not least. I've been unable to stop the three, always-on apps from running in the background. Anyone have any suggestions there?

I have had this phone for a couple of weeks now and the battery life is much much much better.

As already said in this and many similar threads, let the battery go right down, run a loop of music etc to drain it totally, switch it on and drain any last drop of power, then switch it off and do a full mains charge (not USB). Once you have done this 2 or 3 times the battery life increases dramatically.

I have 3G on, Wifi searching off, Bluetooth off.

As for the 3 apps that are running, these are your 3 screens available by swiping your finger across the screen, I think they call it the 3D menu or something. They are always there and thats fine 😊 if you really want to lose them you could switch to a basic theme, but whats the point? why buy a fancy phone then switch everything off 😊

Respect to BradAll - had my i8910 for two weeks now & two nights ago I had this problem for the first time!!!

Woke up, instead of to the alarm, but to the low battery beep. As per my other posts, I've carefully conditioned my battery, done the tweaks like BradAll and I checked I had no running background apps + had 6 bars left. The only thing I did differently was set the alarm. I did not soft reset the handset, but I did use GPS/Wifi heavily during the previous day.
:con?
So, thinking it might be something to do with the Alarm app, I repeated the above, but ensured I soft reset the handset before bed. This time, no problems at all, and I still had full battery bars + an alarm this morning.

I can only conclude that the GPS or WiFi can set off a rogue background process, which is not obvious to the end-user!
😮

Anyone else comment on this weird battery drain possibility?
I've only had it once in 2 weeks, but imagine if you really needed the handset in the morning! You can't wait 2-4h for a charge, eh? Really thinking aobut getting a second battery, to keep charged as a backup. :frown:

Now to try & find a 'task manager' type app for Symbian, which *fingers crossed* I can actually install, without all this certificate nonsense. (I'm new to Symbian with the i8910, y'see)

Hi took delivery of a new battery yesterday put it on charge it was ready by 6:40 pm pulled it off charge and used the phone for a whole day texts calls odd bit of web work etc, and guess what its just lost its top bar on the battery indicator. so 24 hours and 1 bit of battery used up.

seems that if your one of those like me that took delivery of the phone in the day charged it up then later added you .sis and . jar apps then added your contact details while you doing this your charging a slightly used battery causing it bad memory effect.

I would say try this if you can.

Maybe some of you are interested in solar power - no I am not a retailer ! - , but try to find any solution . I found this on another forum :
- solar charger , USB , with adapter : 3,5 and 2 mm
http://usb.brando.com.hk/usb-solar-charging-4-port-hub_p00984c039d15.html
- solar charger , sorry only AAA and Dutch :
http://www.gpsolar.nl/

😊 Regards jApi NL

a couple of power saving tips from N95 days ..
if you can get to the advanced wifi setup
look for Tx Power .. almost certainly set at 100mW .. set it at 10 or 4mW
(hopefully these options are available to you with the Samsung)

s60 .. menu / tools / settings / connection / wireless lan / options / Advanced settings .. yes

while you're there set Power saving Enabled

switch off bluetooth of you're not using it and WLAN scanning (in conjunction with the above will cut down wifi battery use)

good luck!

I am using Nokia S60 3rd . Thank you for your reply : never knew this setting . Also in this Setting you can change : "Show Availability of WLAN " to > Never . I think this helps too .

😊 Regards jApi NL

I got my i8910 on wednesday, charged it for 15hrs, then depleted which lasted a whole day with the screen on max brightness and never turned off the screen, lasted about 9hrs which was amazing then charged a further 12hrs but since this morning when i took it off charge i connected it to the PC to put a couple of movies on and abit of music and from 10am the power has dropped from 100% to 45% i have sent 2 text messages watched a 10min 720p video and a 5min phone call and played nearly 1hr of MP3's. Surely it should not be this bad? I got my phone through phones4u. Should i contact them about a replacement battery or Orange. i am playing transformers in 720p to kill the battery and try a full charge again and see if it's any better. But it does sound like some back ground processes which is heavily draining the battery. It seems every 10mins of 720p content is draing the battery 15%!!!

Showing a wallpaper screen is not processor intensive. Showing HD video really taxes the system a lot of IO and processor work.

If you're connecting to your PC for any length of time check that the device is charging.

Well the brightness tends to drain most mobile phone batteries quite quick but Samsung have specs of the i8910 to provide playback of 720p @ 4.3hrs but can't even get close to that. While connected it was indeed charging tried bluetooth but performance was very poor not even 1mb/sec transfer.

You might find a solution here

http://samsungi8910omnia.com/forum/omnia-hd-general-discussion/battery-life/

What you can do is as first let the battery go totaly empty by using the phone till it goes out of it's own.
Then take the battery out and rap it in a alumiun fole.
After that putt it in a freezer fore two ours.
Than get it out and putt it in the phone again, and let the battry fully load.
Have fun, sorry for my english

Hi - IMO this battery drain issue is a much more fundamental programming issue, and I have just been spending 'some considerable time' trying to figure it out. I have had this overnight 'quick drain' phenomenon once last week, and now again, for a fourth time, I have woken up to a one bar battery (I am doing tests to solve it).

I have put on the i8910 every conceivable tweak going, AFAIK, that includes closing apps, WiFi, GPS, putting on all the packet data/video sharing tweaks (on other posts here, at AAS, on the other links above re: battery drain issues, poutting on the power saving, no-scanning for WiFi routers etc., no BT, as per excellent posts above (BTW the menu system is different on the i8910 compared to what Japanil/Seki report! - but cloe enough so that you can hunt about - the WiFi power saving appears to be ON by Default, so that is good for those who can't be bothered to check!).

Elsewhere on the 'net, I have picked up the info that by using your PC/USB cable, this may setup a background process you cannot control... ultimately draining the battery. Indeed, this is what I did last night about 6pm, before I fully charged my i8910 for 4h, and then left it by my bed overnight, to awake to one bar (as if I was watching an .mp4-AAC all night!). I checked I had no apps running, all the above tweaks seem to be in place, I had not used BT or GPS since the last reboot, but I had used WiFi and Samsung PC studio.
I do not have a memory card in its slot (waiting for the 32gb microsd, plus trying to solve the above first!).

Conclusion: As far as I can tell, the 'workaround' to avoid the overnight battery drain issue, is to reboot your handset just before bed time, once you have put on all the known tweaks. If you have a mission critical business reason to use the i8910 the following morning, just make sure you have your second battery, fully charged, and ready to change over when required.

Other than that, does anyone have a clue about this mystery?
Quite frankly, this is unacceptable, as, trust me, one day you will wake up with no battery and no backup. I really can't remember the last time I had a handset that did this - oh yes, I can, one of the early Orange SPV models about 6 years ago had an issue like this when you left an SD card in (but this does not apply here, as I don't have a microSD in the slot).

Roll on the firmware updates... *fingers crossed* *sigh*

To check background processes - is there any freeware out there? Or am I to buy Best Taskman? I can't find any DETAILED/Advanced background/task manager software on the i8910 as standard (Orange xxIE2 branded). Boy, am I starting to use my WM6.1 software archive again... this handset is on its last legs for me. Way too many bugs!

When you want internal info , you can try two apps :
Both work on S60 v 3 , so maybe on v 5 as well :
1. Nokia Betalabs Device Status :
http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/nokia-device-status
2. Third party app PhoNetInfo from Patrick Frei (recommended) :
http://www.patrickfrei.ch/phonetinfo/
Old version free , new version paid .

😊 Regards jApi NL

Thanks! Great ideas - I have finally had time to figure out and learn the Symbian signing situation this afternoon, mainly because PAtrick Frei has some great HOWTO instructions on his site:
http://www.patrickfrei.ch/phonetinfo/downloads_unsigned.html

So, I have my signed
PhoNetInfo_2.2.0_OSO.sis
& it installed ok & now I am starting my journey to hunt down spurious processes that may/may not be affecting this possible overnight battery drain phenomenon.

Can I also add that I was a bit confused for about 5min wondering why I could only see the 'General' tab in Patrick Frei's program (great job Patrick!) - y'see, when you first start the application on the i8910, there is no indication that other tabs exist at all (no big Left or Right handed white triangles, either side of General - these do not exist when you first start the program!). It is only when I read the Instructions and it said there were tabs did I 'guess' that you could touch swipe your figure over the word 'General' & then the other tabs (& the white triangles) appear! Thought I'd mention it here for any others who want to try this prog out & think it only has one screen!

Now, finally, after 4 weeks, I have the opportunity to start digging deeper into Symbian. I can't help feeling that this kind of program really ought to exist 'out of the box' on this kind of handset (eh, Samsung, Why not talk to M. Frei & give him some euro?).

Hi a note to all if you had the phone on orange and you have debranded it you need to do a hard reset after, then you will have a really good battery there are orange stuff still left over trying to start stuff that drains the battery.Just remember to save your contacts and stuff as it will deleat them.

HARD RESET *#7370#

Well, I have convinced myself that this is a bug re: some rogue background process I cannot identify.

Symptom: As we know, typically, you wake up, and from a full charge the evening before, you only have one bar of battery left! Previous to this, with all the known tweaks installed, battery optimised, you can get at least a full day+, sometimes up to 2.5 days (on minimum usage)... so, how come overnight, it suddenly runs down?

This happened to me 4 times during the last month, and, here's a new scenario: I guessed it was happening as I was in the car, put the handset on charge from one bar (via miniUSB cigarette lighter charger+microUSB adapter) and after 2h on charge, the handset went up 1 bar, and after 4h (return trip) only 3 bars were up and these 'ran down' quickly (I had used this charger before & all was fine). At home, I rebooted the handset, and put it on the standard charger, by bedtime it was full charge & did not rundown overnight (as I didn't use the handset I guess!).

Possible causes: Use of GPS, WiFi, connecting USB cable & using PC studio - really, I don't know. Just general heavy use, & somewhere this 'rogue process' starts up.

Now, I can't see anything abnormal with PhoNetInfo app - there's usually 12 processes on a fresh boot up, then if you attach the USB cable you get 3 more which you can't get rid of unless you reboot, - one is a Clock process (?)). I might write up what I've found in another thread, but to be honest, I can't be bothered & I don't understand the names of the processes yet, being a new Symbian user.

Workaround: of course, as reported:
Turn off your handset every night, and put on charge. Turn on in the morning. This has always given me the correct full charge.

That's my cent's worth!
... waiting for those two new juicy firmwares - perhaps one will solve this battery drain 'feature'. BenM on Samsung UK innovators forum has hinted it should be in one of them!

Certainly, this is the biggest problem/flaw I have experienced with this handset, much more than the AMR codec issue / lack of 'practical' HD movie recording. Without any battery in the morning, you really are in a bit of a pickle!

Well after playing around with my handset i have turned 3G off, GPS off, Wifi Off, BT off and get very good battery life now. I have only needed to turn the phone off after connected via USB which as has been said before has some process which east away the battery. With these tweeks i have been able to get out of genral use of 6hrs Audio playback, 5hrs phone calls and 4 1/2 days standby on a single charge which is pretty good i think. This week i have got 4 days life with 1hrs video playback at 640x360 MP4, 6hrs music and 2hrs phone calls. Over all much more impresses. I am still debating debanding the phone for the newer firmware.

Hi Dazz - I agree with all your comments - when the battery works, after some consumer input to setup the handset from all the tweaks you can read off the 'net, it is GREAT -

the main issue is, what happens if you are someone e.g. a professional, who requires his handset to be on all the time, even when it is charging, so you don't miss a call.?

Perhaps also you are someone who doesn't even have time to remember to reboot his telephone every day? Currently I am not someone such as this, but I have been...

Every other handset I have owned has not had this problem, bar an Orange SPV, which became known for battery drain via its SD card slot (with an SD card in, a background process started up & drained the battery much quicker).

As an update, as of this morning, I am at a loss as to what is causing this problem - as my i8910 suffered it again last night for really obscure reasons - this is what happened:

I turned off the handset and charged it up yesterday evening, taking it off the charger at 23:00, fully charged after at least 4h. I turned it on (to test) and left it on. Now, most nights, if I do this, knowing I had not used the handset (it was on a fresh reboot before I went to bed) then I should be ok! In fact, at 07.15 I was awakened by the 'low battery' beep! So, in fact, the battery had drained as if I had been watching an .mp4 all night! BUT, the handset had not been touched and the screen never activated!

Now, what had changed?
The only thing that had happened in the night is that I had received an SMS from an overseas friend at about 1 a.m. which I had not heard as I leave my handset in silent mode.

So,
Is the battery drain problem
a) due to the Messaging app?
b) due to the USB sync cable that when connected to PC studio - but I have found starts up 3 additional apps (from the 12 initially reported by PhoNetInfo) two of which are a Clock process - and, yes, a Messaging process!!! - as XP-based PC studio program shows you on the PC screen your new SMSs!
or it could be:
c) no-one else can relate to these problems as I am the only one with a faulty handset in this regard...(?)

So, do I have what you would call a faulty handset? (I think I do) Has anyone out there actually 'nailed' this problem with a practical workaround yet, that doesn't involve leaving the handset switched off ?

I have Orange UK firmware xxIE2 - not debranded because a) I am not sure of warranty implications and b) I have not had the time to properly research this to ensure a low risk re: I don't damage the handset and can put back on the Orange firmware too - and c) I am now waiting for the possible elixir of the two possible firmware updates from Samsung, assuming somehow a UK user can get them on his/her i8910, and that one contains a fix for this battery issue.

So it remains, my workaround will be to leave the handset switched off overnight completely and/or have my spare battery ready to be put in, if my main one drains.

- but for others who may be reading this, this might not be a great situation! (e.g. you might actually want to use the handset at all times). I also found (see above post) that if this battery drain process is actually going on in your handset, then charging your handset whilst it is on results in poor overall charging - i.e. in 4h you will not get a full charge, but rather a 30% charge, then after you stop charging, of course, your battery goes down in 3h again.

Conclusion: I believe now that at least one way this battery drain phenomenon on my xxIE2 (6 May 2009) Orange UK firmware i8910 might be somehow caused is through a Messaging app process, likely activated e.g. by an incoming SMS.

Comments welcomed!

Is there any program out there I don't have to pay for that will allow me to find and 'kill' this Messaging process I see through PhoNetInfo, so I can test my findings above? I don't want to pay, as I might eventually have to return the handset and give up on this incredibly buggy Symbian handset altogether and get back to happier WinMo hunting grounds. But I haven't given up, not quite yet, but I am very close to this decision (sorry everyone)!

I also have not yet fully understood this Symbian signing nonsense. a) I don't want to get a certificate from 'someone' in China and such possible security implications and
b) with Symbian Online signing BETA I have only ever managed to get ONE freeware app to work from it onto my i8910. All the other attempts (including DrJukka's new clock app - I think I will write to him and tell hime my probs). My i8910 still reports some certificate error of one kind or another, even after having been 'successfully' online signed over at Symbian Online. I've tried resetting my i8910 clock, all those tricks, and my i8910 is also set in the App Manager that I have allowed 'All' apps, and no Online Cert checking. I've also tried FreeSigner, etc. all to no avail.

Could it be that Symbian online BETA does not fully understand my i8910? I note online that some of the menu dialogues that other users report e.g. for the N95, are different as to how you find them on the i8910.
So there are obvious differences between N95 and 5800/i8910 v5 menus.

I understand the security reasons why signing exists, but I have never wasted such time with WinMo (ever) and never had (yet) any probs with my WinMo handset in 3 years of its use. Looks like I will have to set aside another weekend to understand signing *sigh*. I've found loads of webpages on how to get a certificate, but it all looks so flakey (some of the OPDA sites don't work) that I don't think I can take the risk with my i8910 handset I need everyday for professional use.